Malibu HOA Challenges Conservancy Parks Plan

• Ramirez Canyon Group Tries to Rally Opposition

BY BILL KOENEKER

The Ramirez Canyon Preservation Fund, a homeowners group, long a foe of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy’s actions, especially in its namesake canyon, is urging other homeowner associations to send members to the Oct. 9 City of Malibu Planning Commission meeting when it will review the proposed SMMC parks and trails plan.

The plan has encountered growing opposition from Malibu residents who oppose overnight camping planned for Charmlee Park and voice other concerns.

In addition, the plan is a proposal to complete trail connections for the Coastal Slope Trail and other connector trails throughout the mountain areas, linking Zuma Canyon with Ramirez Canyon and Solstice Canyon Park through Escondido Canyon Park to Corral Canyon Park.

The Conservancy seeks to amend the city’s Local Coastal Program to incorporate what officials call the “Malibu Parks Public Access Enhancement Plan.”

Ramirez homeowners contend that under the plan the Conservancy would have “special rules for their properties—rules which are not compatible with the Malibu [Local Coastal Program].”

The plan specifies public access, recreational facilities and program improvements for increased accessibility for visitors with disabilities, including fully accessible overnight camping.

However, the Ramirez Fund states the plan is unclear about the number of campsites, or campers. It states that camp areas with more than 25 sites should provide two American Disabilities Act accessible sites.

“The Fund adamantly opposes camping near residential neighborhoods, except for closely supervised camping for the disabled at SMMC’s Ramirez Canyon property,” states a Fund letter sent out to other HOA groups.

The HOA maintains that, given the high fire danger, camping puts park users and local residents “at unnecessary and irresponsible risk. Camping cannot be made safe. Rangers cannot adequately supervise trail camps.”

Some of the Fund’s concerns, expressed in the letter sent out to the HOAs soliciting attendance at next week’s planning commission meeting, contend the state agency is using the LCP amendment process in an effort to “weaken” Malibu’s LCP protections for Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Areas.

The Fund letter ticks off a list of uses the LCP amendment would establish for the SMMC, including allowing motor vehicles in ESHAs, requiring 100-foot stream/ riparian ESHA buffers only where ‘feasible,’ not requiring site-specific biological studies for proposed development, providing that trails which unavoidably impact ESHAs “shall” be found consistent with the LCP, allowing extensive grading and site disturbance of ESHAs and not providing for review by city biologist or Environmental Review Board.

The plan would also allow alteration of streams for pedestrian and or vehicle crossings at all SMMC properties “in violation of the Malibu LCP and the requirements of the state Department of Fish and Game.”

The letter asks other questions about the plan, including how SMMC’s trails plan will impact the city’s own efforts to create a master trails plan.

It also asks, if the policies developed in the LCP amendment are approved, will it in effect create special rules for the SMMC for each of its properties creating de facto “overlay zones.”

Initially, the plan encountered opposition from city officials because the SMMC planned to sidestep Malibu and go directly to the California Coastal Commission for approval.

The Conservancy bowed to municipal pressure, after threats of litigation, to seek city approval for the park proposal through the LCP process.

At the same time, the city, in an attempt to mollify some critics of the trails and park proposal and to bring SMMC officials to the negotiating table, offered to consider overnight camping in Charmlee Park in western Malibu instead of the mid-Malibu locations sought by the SMMC.